As more and more users turn to the Internet for data and services, users are increasingly faced with the daunting task of installing many different desktop applications to access the data and services. Such applications include stock and news tickers, weather alerts, financial software, etc. In many instances, users are frustrated because desktop applications that are bundled together by same vendor often operate in a dissimilar, unintuitive manner. Also, the applications often access the data and services individually, rather than in a cooperative fashion, which creates addition requests to the vendor's servers for data.
In addition, it is difficult for developers to write applications that interact in a consistent manner with other applications that each access a common set of data and services. Developers, large and small, also have problems in making their latest software applications available for download as it is hard to publicize new versions of applications to end-users. Thus, it would be beneficial if developers had access to a consistent, multi-platform, multi-language interface to data and services that implement a standard business logic and provided an application catalog to end-users. The present invention provides such a solution.